Short History of World War II - James L. Stokesbury [164]
He was going to smash through the Gustav Line and push his way both up the coast and up the Liri Valley. When his offensive was well and truly launched, and the Germans all pulled in to meet it, the Anzio forces would break out inland, take up a blocking position and, if all went well, virtually the entire German Army in Italy would be caught and destroyed. Rome would fall as a matter of course, there would be a rollicking dash north all the way to the Alps, and the Italian campaign would end in a justified burst of glory.
Alexander’s May offensive was one of the great setpiece battles of the war, with a huge international cast: Americans, British, Canadians, Free French, Poles, Indians, New Zealanders, South Africans. After dark on the evening of May 11 more than 2,000 artillery pieces began a barrage that ran from the mouth of the Garigliano all the way up past Cassino and into the mountains. An hour before midnight the troops jumped off. The Germans were surprised, but not panicked, and there was heavy fighting and slow going. For some of the Americans along the seacoast it was their first taste of combat, and with heavy casualties and the courage of innocence they forged steadily ahead. To their right, Algerians, Moroccans, and Senegalese of the Free French Corps scaled the mountains and began filtering through the German lines; to their right again Indians and British opened the door of the Liri Valley, and before the Germans could shut it, the Canadians surged through it and up the highway toward Rome. Up in the Apennines the Polish Corps, made up of men who had survived German blitzkrieg and Russian prison camps, circled down and finally raised their eagle banner over the ruins of the monastery. It took more than a week of steady, toe-to-toe slugging, but eventually the Germans could stand it no more. They cracked, then they broke wide open. The Americans lunged up the coast, to Formia, to Gaeta, to Terracina; the French came down off the mountains to meet the Canadians as they pushed up the Liri, and suddenly the Gustav Line was gone, and everyone was off to Rome.
It was a bad two weeks for Kesselring. He had laid out two fall-back positions: the Hitler Line, a few miles up the road to Rome in the Liri Valley, and then the Caesar Line, in the Alban Hills outside Rome. The former had possibilities, the latter was no more than staked out.
The Hitler Line lasted five days. The British and Canadians reached it on the 18th, tried to take it on the run, and did not quite have enough steam left to do so. Five days later they put in a full-scale attack and crashed through. Once more the Germans pulled out and headed north, harried by Allied fighter-bombers.
Meanwhile, up at Anzio, the American commander, General Truscott, was ready to go. The axis of his attack was to run straight out from the beachhead; a short drive of a couple of miles would take him to Cisterna and cut the coastal line of retreat. Continuing in the same direction would take him fifteen miles to Valmontone; that would cut the Liri Valley escape route and trap ten German divisions, the bulk of the available fighting forces in Italy. On the 23rd, Truscott leaped. One of the great fighting generals of the war, Truscott had his troops fired up and they made steady progress toward Valmontone.
On the 26th, as the trap was all but closed, General Clark intervened. He was unhappy with the overall plan; he feared Alexander was going to allow British 8th Army to beat American 5th to Rome. Jealous of the honor, and feeling he and his men deserved it, he ordered Truscott to change the axis of his advance; instead of continuing to Valmontone, Truscott